


New Light

by tmariea (OccasionalArtist)



Category: Tales of Zestiria
Genre: (it's not major or on screen but it is important to the plot), Adulthood, Angst, Character Death, Childhood, Family, Fluff, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Marriage, Winter Solstice
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-07
Updated: 2017-12-07
Packaged: 2019-02-11 23:08:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,493
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12946017
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/OccasionalArtist/pseuds/tmariea
Summary: The Winter Solstice is a time of light and song and stories.  For Mikleo, this makes it even harder losing his mother so close to the holiday.  Thankfully, he has Sorey to offer his support and comfort, to sing with him in the darkest hours of the longest night, and to help make the season bright again in the years to come.





	New Light

**Author's Note:**

> For the Sormik Advent calendar, day 7, with the prompt 'Family!'
> 
> A good portion of this is just an excuse to play around with the Modern AU, Zesty lore-based religion and holiday I've been having fun building for a while. With a heap of sad and cute on top.

It was the first year that Mikleo hadn’t gone to Temple for the Winter Solstice.  He’d had a long car ride from Ladylake instead, and arrived back in Elysia after the sun had already set, too late to attend the sunset services.  Sorey’s house had looked like it always had, with the addition of strings of holiday lights along the trim, a bright point in the early darkness of the evening.  Mikleo had tried to not look at his own house just next door, tried not to think of how it made him feel sick to his stomach to see it dark and empty.

But then the door to Sorey’s house had burst open and he’d heard a shout of his name followed by footsteps pounding down the wooden porch stairs. 

“Welcome home.  I missed you!” Sorey said, yanking Mikleo into a hug and simultaneously trying to lift him off the ground and squeeze him as tight as his arms could manage.

“Me too,” Mikleo managed to choke out.  He felt his toes just barely leave the ground before he was set on his feet again.  When he took a step back, he could see that Sorey was wearing his big, goofy smile, but it was fake looking; there were tears starting to leak from the corners of his eyes.

Sorey scrubbed at his eyes with the back of one hand and sniffed.  “Ah, sorry,” he said, and for a moment it sounded like he was trying to apologize about crying.  But then, broken in the middle by a sob, he finished, “sorry about your mom.”

Sorey’s Gramps had joined them then, to welcome Mikleo home too.  It spared him trying to come up with something to say in reply.  They had all thanked Miss Lailah, an old friend of Mikleo’s mother, for taking care of him while his mother was in the hospital, before heading into the brightly lit house.

The three of them had eaten a quiet, simple dinner in Sorey’s kitchen, as if there was nothing different about this night from any other.  Then Mikleo had taken his bag upstairs to the guest room, which was his room now he supposed, to unpack while Sorey sat cross-legged on the bed to watch.  Thankfully, it hadn’t been too hard to convince Sorey to talk, about school and their friends and everything that had happened while he’d been away.  He hadn’t felt up to filling the silence himself.

But then they had to go to bed, and it had been silent again anyway.  And dark.  Only a tiny sliver of street light filtered through the thick curtain.  It was much harder, without the holiday lights, or Sorey’s chatter, to keep himself from thinking.  Thinking of the past month spent living in someone else’s home, watching day by day as his mother’s smile grew weaker, in almost agonizing wait for the moment it wouldn’t come at all.  Thinking of how now, with his Uncle Michael gone in an accident while traveling a few years ago, he was without family anymore.

Mikleo had thought he must have cried himself out of tears by now, but he was wrong.  He pressed his lips tight together and tried to wipe them quickly away from his cheeks.

Tonight, he had the unfortunate ability to know exactly how long he cried, when he heard the boom of the first of the fireworks going up overhead.  Midnight.  He’d been awake like this for nearly two hours.  His eyes hurt as he watched what tiny flashes he could see illuminated through the edges of the curtain, and his cheeks and nose hurt as he tried to rub them dry one last time.

The sound and the light was enough distraction from his thoughts to stop the tears, at very least.  But as soon as it was done, the world was quiet and dark again. 

He knew there was no way he would be able to sleep; it didn’t feel right.  Sorey’s house was made for sleeping over on the couch, playing video games way too late at night, midnight movies where they’d fall asleep halfway through and watch the rest the next day.  He wasn’t supposed to be alone in this room.  This wasn’t supposed to _be_ his room.  This wasn’t his pillow, it wasn’t his bed and it was Sorey’s Gramps asleep down the hall, not his mom.  His mom was… in a better place.  In the glorious Land of the Seraphim.  He’d heard that a lot over the past few days.  She wasn’t sick anymore, she wasn’t in pain; but she wasn’t _there_.

She’d always been there, for every night when he couldn’t fall asleep and for every Winter Solstice when the sun threatened to stay down below the horizon and leave him in darkness.  She’d read him the stories and sing him the songs.  She – she was reason the light came back; she had called it back with her voice and _she wasn’t there_.

Mikleo could feel his heart beating faster.  He clutched his knees tight to his chest even as he told himself to just get up and turn on the light.  It took a few repetitions in his head before he could convince his legs to move.  When they did, he found himself scrambling into the hall instead, and then to Sorey’s room.

Sorey stirred as he opened and closed the door, despite his best efforts to stay quiet.  “Mikleo?”

Mikleo froze, suddenly unsure how to explain his fears to his best friend.  His mind knew that whether the sun rose or not didn’t depend on his mother’s songs.  But he felt so nauseous he thought he might puke, and his heart still stuttered in his chest as if it really believed that the light was gone forever.

“Mikleo what’s wrong?”

While he was trying to think, Sorey had sat up in bed, turning himself into a shadowy silhouette.  That unnerved Mikleo too, so he walked over to sit on the bed, where he could reach out and touch Sorey, could feel that everything was still as it should be.  With hardly any conscious thought, they were folding into each other.  Mikleo’s forehead came to rest on Sorey’s shoulder and a pair of hands came up to his back.

“We didn’t sing,” he said finally, just because he felt like he had to say something.

 “Sing?”

“The Winter Solstice songs, the ones we sing to bring back the light.  We,” Mikleo choked on his words, but they came tumbling out of his throat no matter how much his breath caught and caught.  “Mom and I, we stay up late to sing every year.  And now she’s _g-gone_.  The light isn’t going to come back.”

“What do you mean?  Of course it’s going to come back,” Sorey reassured.

Mikleo could only shake his head against Sorey’s shoulder and squeeze his eyes shut tight so that he wouldn’t start to cry all over his shirt.

Suddenly, the hands on his back were gone, and then pushing him away at his shoulders.  Sorey probably didn’t want his shirt cried on either.  Mikleo brought a hand up to rub at his eyes and winced.  When he looked back up, even though it was hard to see in the dark, Sorey’s face looked almost excited.

“I have an idea,” he declared.  “Why don’t I sing with you?”

“Huh?”

“Yeah!  We can stay up all night, read all our favorite stories and sing all the songs, and then in the morning it will be light again.”

“Really?” Mikleo asked, and hoped that Sorey hadn’t noticed his voice cracking in the middle of the word.

“Yes really.  Gramps and I, we’re going to be your family now.  And that’s what families do – help each other when they’re sad or scared.”

“I…” he started, but then came up short on what to say.  He nodded instead.  “Thank you.”

Sorey pulled Mikleo into a sudden, brief hug before releasing him again.  “You’re welcome!  Now come on, let’s go!”  He kicked off his blankets and slid into a pair of slippers next to the bed before grabbing Mikleo’s hand and tugging him from the room.

They knew from years of sneaking downstairs that Gramps slept like a log, except for that third creaky step from the bottom.  They carefully stepped over and made it down with no signs of an awakened and grumpy guardian from above.

The living room was dark, but not as dark as the bedroom had been.  There were no curtains to block the lights from the street, and on the mantle over the fireplace sparkled five electric candles, still turned on.  The bulb on the center candle was white, and flanked by two on each side in red, green, blue and orange.  Around each hung a detailed charm in molded silver – a stylized sun for Maotelus, and then the symbols of each natural element.  Mikleo knew, from the annual round of bragging, that these charms were the ‘real deal, even older than Gramps!’

“Before people used battery candles it was the wax that was colored,” he said, just because it felt good to say something normal.

Sorey looked over his shoulder as he crossed the room.  “Sure, but they do make the fire different colors at Temple every year.  Loanna told me they do it with chemicals.”  He turned away again as he reached his destination, and plugged an electrical cord into the socket on the wall.  Strands of tiny lights wrapped into garlands of fake pine needles and holly branches lit up across the room.  They were draped around the fireplace and lined the tops of all four walls.

“Is this okay?” Sorey asked.  “Gramps wouldn’t let us light the fireplace.”

“It’s okay.  But anyway, the colors in Temple only last a minute or two.  You couldn’t do that all night.”

“Maybe not.”

Mikleo looked at Sorey with narrowed eyes.  It wasn’t like him to give up on an argument.  If he was only doing it because he felt bad for Mikleo, he would be mad.  But it didn’t look as if there was any pity on Sorey’s face, so he let it slide.  Instead he followed him to the couch, the one he always started to sink into while watching movies if he wasn’t careful, and sat gingerly.  He pulled his knees up to his chest while Sorey reached for the family copy of the Celestial Record on the coffee table.

“Where do you think we should start?” Sorey asked, running his thumb across the tabs and bookmarks around the edges.  “I know the services always start with the story of the Great Darkness falling at Camlann, but that one always just makes me sad.”

“Right,” Mikleo agreed.  He leaned his head to the side on his knees so he could still see Sorey, not that he would notice him looking.  He always had so much energy when talking about the Celestial Record; in that moment it made Mikleo jealous for that feeling. 

And yet Sorey did look over when he was least expecting it, with a wide, bright smile on his face.  It felt almost as if he was trying to share his joy.  The edges of Mikleo’s mouth curled up a bit and he wondered when the last time he smiled genuinely was.  He thought he saw Sorey’s smile spread even wider, but it might have been just a trick of the dim lighting.

“So then, what about the Origin of the Shepherd?” Sorey suggested, and caught the edge of a worn leather bookmark between his fingers to open to the page.

Mikleo scooted closer to Sorey to look over his shoulder.  One page of the two was taken up by a drawing of a spectacular Shepherd mural.  The man was surrounded on all sides by symbols and images, of Maotelus, of the seraphim, of the dragons legend said once roamed the skies.  He reached over to touch the sword the man held aloft.

His arm dragged over Sorey’s as he moved, and Sorey turned to him with a frown that creased his eyebrows.  “You’re really cold.  I’m sorry, you know how much our heater sucks.  The fireplace usually does most of the work.  Here.”  He pressed the open book in to Mikleo’s hands before turning and stretching as far as he could over the arm of the couch to try to reach the blanket thrown over the nearby armchair.  He let out a triumphant noise, and dragged his prize back onto the couch.  “Trade you!”

Mikleo had hardly a moment to react before the Celestial Record was snatched away and the blanket pressed into his arms instead.  He draped it over his shoulders and tucked his legs to the side so he could wind the edge around his bare feet.

“Don’t you have slippers?”

“Not here.  At home.”

“Ah.”  Sorey looked a mix between apologetic and a bit lost.  He turned his face suddenly back to the Celestial Record and cleared his throat.  “In the Era of Great Darkness, Maotelus conferred with his Lords and all decided they would need a champion to bring them back the light,” he began to read.  Mikleo moved closer again to read along over his shoulder.

After they read the Origin of the Shepherd, Sorey insisted on reading the story of The Shepherd Who Still Sleeps.  It wasn’t directly related to the solstice holidays or prayers, but it was his favorite.  Mikleo didn’t put up a fuss about that; if Sorey was willing to stay up all night with him, he should get to read his favorite story.

Next came the Hymns to The Four Lords.  They sang to Hyanoa, Musiphe, Amenoch, and Eumacia, trying to keep their voices low so as to not wake Gramps.  They called to the wind, to fire, to water, and to earth, to ask for their blessing and bounty in the coming year.

It was different to hear the hymns in Sorey’s voice.  They had sung them together in Temple with everyone else, but never before just the two of them.  Mikleo’s heart couldn’t decide whether to be sad that his mother’s voice wasn’t joining them, or grateful for everything Sorey was doing for him.  He landed somewhere between, and did his best to keep his voice from cracking as he quietly followed Sorey’s lead.

They were just beginning to read the prelude before the Light Calling Songs when Mikleo leaned back against the arm of the couch, and clutched the blanket tighter in his arms.  His eyes were trying to slip shut.  He thrust the blanket off of himself with vehemence, and sat up, shaking his head to try to clear it.

Sorey paused where he had been reading and looked over.  He frowned when he saw the blanket lying to the side.  “Now that’s not good,” he said, leaning over to set the Celestial Record on the other arm of the couch, still open to their page.  Before Mikleo could protest, there were hands snatching up the blanket and wrapping it around his shoulders again.  They brought the sides around the front and tucked them close together so that he was entirely bundled up.  “You should be warm.”

“I’ll fall asleep like this,” Mikleo admitted.

“That’s okay.”

“No, I can’t sleep.”  If he slept, it would be for nothing.  If he slept, he’d wake up in darkness.

Sorey puffed out his chest and declared, “I’m not tired at all!  I can stay up for you.”

Mikleo tried to open his mouth to protest, to say that Sorey didn’t have to do that for him alone.  But his eyes still hurt from crying earlier, and it was so much easier to lean back against the arm of the couch again.  The lights from the garlands were starting to blur in his vision, changing from tiny points of light to wider and wider circles that met and blended together. 

He blinked and looked back at Sorey, who had picked up the Celestial Record again and seemed absorbed in finding his spot.  When he found the line he’d been searching for, he made a soft “aha” sound, and then opened his mouth to sing.  Mikleo recognized the song; it was Journey’s End, the hymn for sending off the old light of the previous year.  Even without the music to go along with, both of them had sung it often enough that Sorey was fairly close to key.  Mikleo tried to join, but his voice was distorted from lying down, and quickly cut off by a yawn. 

Sorey paused as he heard him falter, in order to insist, “Sleep.”  Then, he picked up where he’d left off in the song as if he hadn’t been interrupted.  Even his image was blurring now, sat with his legs crossed to support the Celestial Record, head tilted just slightly up to sing.

The next sight Mikleo would see was the first light of dawn through the living room windows.  Sorey would be curled next to him, with the blanket tucked messily around them both.

 

* * *

 

With Mikleo’s memories of the Winter Solstice from his childhood, no one would have blamed him if he had come to hate the holiday.  But, it had become one of his favorite days of the year, and Sorey was almost entirely responsible.  Mikleo could tell that he’d put a lot of effort into making each Winter Solstice special.  He’d given the best presents, convinced Gramps to take them to interesting places and then still stayed up all night reading after.  Sometimes it was the Celestial Record and the Light Calling Songs, sometimes a new book that had them both fascinated.  He’d tried to bake Mikleo a cake when they were twelve, which had been memorable at the very least even if the cake itself didn’t go to plan, kissed him for the first time under the fireworks when they were fifteen, and, two years ago to the day, Sorey had got down on one knee at dawn and asked Mikleo to marry him.

And now, well.  Mikleo smoothed non-existent wrinkles out of the front of his white suit, and reached up to tuck away any stray hairs even though each was perfectly in place.

“Nuh-uh, you stop that,” Lailah said, and swatted his hands away.  She’d been working on his hair for hours, braiding and coiling and pinning.  The end result was a crown of many interwoven smaller braids, from under which tumbled an artfully casual waterfall of curls.  He had so many clips and pins in his hair at this point that he would not want to be standing outside if a lightning storm blew up.  Not that lightning was very common in the winter.  There had been that one time when he was eleven and it had scared him badly because he hadn’t been expecting the thunder and…

“Mikleo.”

Mikleo blinked a few times and Lailah came into focus before him.  Red and white lacy dress, hair up in a high ponytail, hand hovering just slightly out from her side, at the ready to swat at him again if he tried to touch his hair more.  Lords he was nervous if his thoughts would take off like that. 

He took a deep breath and tried to ground himself.  The room smelled of pine boughs.  They were laid out on the windowsills and draped across the top of the full-length mirror before him.  Five candles dripping colored wax adorned a small altar near the door, more for ritual than for light.  Outside the window, the sky was lightening from the black of night into the grey of pre-dawn.

Once he felt as if he had a handle on the racing beat of his heart in his chest, Mikleo smiled in a way he hoped would be reassuring.

“Are you ready?”

“I think so.”

“Just remember, if you try to run away, your feet will be even colder!” Lailah exclaimed.  “You know, because it’s winter.  And there’s snow on the ground.  Under your feet,” she continued, and then cleared her throat when Mikleo still looked at her blankly.  “Anyway, you look stunning.  I can’t wait to see Sorey’s face!  And now for the finishing touch.”

Lailah pulled a silver hair clip from her bag.  It was decorated with two delicate silver fish, dancing in the swirls of water that held them in place.  Sorey had given it to him for the solstice the previous year.  She stood back to admire her handiwork and clapped her hands together.  “You know, Muse would be so happy.”

“You think so?” Mikleo asked.  He blinked twice quickly to fend off any wetness in his eyes; it was hard, to think that his mother wouldn’t be there to see his wedding day.

“Of course!  She always used to say that she thought the two of you would end up together one day.  Looks like she was right after all.”

There was no more chance for thought, then, because there was a knock on the door and one of the temple attendants saying, “It’s time.”  The woman smiled at him gently when Lailah opened the door and led the two of them out into the temple.  The antechamber where he’d gotten ready was at the back and to one side of the temple proper.  Standing in a very similar door, at the other end of the aisle formed by the last row of pews was Sorey, decked out in a black suit and still wearing his big feather earrings despite the occasion.

Mikleo was suddenly quite grateful for Lailah holding onto his arm and leading him forward.  They’d practiced this entry a few days ago during the rehearsal, but how was he supposed to be expected to remember any of that when Sorey was looking at him as if he had made the sun rise again himself?

They met in the middle of the aisle, Sorey similarly led by Gramps.  At this point, they were supposed to link arms and head down to the altar.  Instead, Sorey stopped to say, “You look amazing.”  His voice caught just a bit as he spoke, and there was the glitter of tears at the edges of his eyes.

“I thought you said you weren’t going to cry at our wedding,” Mikleo replied with a teasing smile.

“I did, didn’t I?  Looks like you win.”

“There’s no winning or losing today, okay.  Are you ready to do this?”

“I’ve been ready for a long time.”

At this point each of their chaperones were starting to give them subtle nudges, so they took each other’s arm and began to walk forward.  Lailah and Gramps linked arms as well and followed behind.  They passed the pews, draped in blue and purple flowers and filled with their friends, and came to stand before the priest at the altar, who smiled widely to see them.  They bowed in respect, and then turned to face each other.

The priest began to speak.  They had chosen favorite passages from the Celestial Record for the ritual portion of the ceremony, lines and stories that represented love and growth and discovery. Both of them had read the words countless times, and so the speech faded away into the back of Mikleo’s mind.  He was far more entranced by the way, as the sun rose, light shone through the magnificent stained glass window behind the altar and cast a rainbow of colors across Sorey’s face.  For a moment, streaks of red and blue mingled, and painted Sorey’s eyes with a flash of purple.  Mikleo’s smile widened and his heart felt even lighter, to think that somewhere out there Muse might be looking down on them from the Land of the Seraphim.

“Mikleo.” Sorey took his hands and began to speak, bringing his attention back.  “You are the most amazing person I know.  You are so smart, and talented, and hardworking, and have persevered through everything in our lives with such dignity.  You have taken care of me, and taught me, and shown me what it is to love someone with your whole heart.  It has been the greatest privilege of my life to do the same for you.”  Here, Sorey paused to swallow and to blink against the tears forming in his eyes once again.  His voice caught as he began to speak again, but that made his words no less resolute.  “Once, many years ago, I said that I would be your family.  And so I, Sorey, promise once more – with the light of Maotelus and his four Lords as our witness – to be your family now and for the rest of our lives.  I promise to love you and to stand by your side through all of the joy and triumphs and sorrows that we may experience, as your husband.”

Mikleo squeezed Sorey’s hands, and tried to fight back his own tears.  It didn’t seem to matter though, as he began to speak, that his voice was already catching.  Neither did he find himself caring that the words from his mouth did not exactly follow the speech he had carefully crafted and rehearsed.  All that mattered was the man in front of him.  “Sorey, I can’t imagine what it would be like to live without you.  You have been by my side through some of the best and the worst moments of my life, to celebrate or to lend your shoulder to lean on.  Words don’t do justice to how much it means to me.  You are my best friend, my love, my own guiding light.  I want to keep growing, keep becoming a better version of myself for you.  I promise that every day, I will work to build a bright future for us.”  And then he found himself falling into the traditional words they had agreed to say together, telling Sorey, “I, Mikleo – with the light of Maotelus and his four Lords as our witness – promise to love you and to stand by your side through all of the joy and triumphs and sorrows that we may experience, as your husband.”

This time, Sorey wasn’t even pretending to hold back his tears, and smiling wide through it all.  At the priest’s word, they turned and stepped up to the altar, where there was an unlit, white candle waiting for them, and before it two gold rings.  Sorey picked one up and slid it onto Mikleo’s finger.  Mikleo copied his motions.

“As a sign that you, Sorey will take Mikleo as your husband, and you Mikleo will take Sorey as your husband, please light the candle together from Maotelus’s light,” the priest instructed.

They grasped the candle, with Mikleo’s hand above and Sorey’s below, and the light catching on the gold of their new rings.  Together they tipped the wick to meet the center white candle.  The flame caught as they brought it away again, and sprung up bright and strong.


End file.
